Bloodlust (Part 1)
The third fic in the PW vampire trilogy! A work in progress still, and a foray into some untried ground for me... but I hope you enjoy!
Title: Bloodlust
Pairing: Phoenix/Edgeworth, some Franziska/Adrian
Theme: Romance, Horror, Comedy, Action
Warnings: Spoilers for PW 1 & 2, vampires and blood, gay lawyers, violence... (and part 4 has SEX!)
Summary: Vampire!Phoenix and Miles are now a steady couple, but they just can't seem to get out of the habit of keeping secrets. An evil force lurks in the background, Shoe makes a cameo, and people get drunk. Enjoy!
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5
-----
“Hey, isn’t that Miles Edgeworth? The famous prosecutor?”
“You’re right! And is that-?”
“Phoenix Wright? That attorney?”
“Yeah! I’ve seen them on court TV! I thought they were rivals… I wonder what they’re doing here?”
A third voice joined the conversation, one Phoenix recognized. “Hey, ladies! Do you want the inside scoop on those two?” Rustling of fabric that was probably a nod, barely heard over the tinny sound of metal on metal. “Well, ladies, those two aren’t rivals they’re looo-“
Phoenix whipped his head around and pointed across the room at where Larry stood between two women, heads bent conspiratorially together.
“Larry Butz, say one more word and you’re up against Edgeworth next!” His voice was loud enough to reach all the way across the room and stop Larry dead.
One of the women opened her mouth in shock. “How did he hear us from all the way over there?”
Larry didn’t answer her, just shrugged and made his way back over to where Phoenix was glaring at him. When he reached the two lawyers, he gave them a wink and a thumbs-up.
“The girls here are so high-class here, Edgey! Though, the outfits are weird…” He tugged at his padding uncomfortably.
Miles didn’t bother to look at Larry as he replied icily. “It’s a fencing club, Larry. Most people here have money or talent- with two exceptions.”
Phoenix couldn’t help but feel insulted. “Hey, that’s not fair! I’m only here because you made me come. I still don’t see what’s wrong with chopsticks…”
Miles turned a look on him that would normally be reserved for something he had just stepped in. “They are unrefined, haphazard and frankly ridiculous weapons. And what if you come up against an opponent with superior reach?”
Phoenix knew it was a rhetorical question, but he didn’t care. “Throw one?”
“And then you’re left unarmed. Think for once, Wright.” He turned away from the attorney, picking up his practice foil from the bench and walking towards a free strip. Sighing, Phoenix followed him. It was time to get his butt kicked again.
They had been in combat training for a while now… or what Miles referred to as combat training. Phoenix called it “making me look like an idiot”. It didn’t help that Miles’s method of instruction seemed to consist mostly of beating him soundly several times in a row, while mocking his incompetence.
“Are the insults really necessary?” Phoenix asked as he stuffed his sweat-soaked padding into a gym bad while nursing a severely bruised ego.
“They always seem to improve your performance in court.” Miles bent over to grab his shoes from the bottom of his locker, giving Phoenix a very nice view. The vampire suppressed the urge to whistle, instead turning to close the locker and stare pointedly at the number engraved on the little metal plate.
It was hard, so hard to keep their relationship under wraps. In some ways, it was harder to conceal than his nature as one of the living dead. Larry’s inane comments aside, he had trouble acting normal around Miles anymore. He wanted to hold Miles, to kiss him, to run his fingers through that silver hair and inhale the mingled scent of tea and aftershave. Being in court with Miles and treating him like any other prosecutor was hard enough… and then Miles had to take him to a gym with a public changing room.
“Wright, are you trying to get a job as a living statue?”
Phoenix shook his head and pulled up the hood of his coat, slipping on his sunglasses as the three old friends exited the gym. Larry was chattering on about the girls at the fencing club, while Miles unlocked the car and motioned everyone in.
“I don’t see why you even bother coming, Larry.” Phoenix squeezed into the sports car’s miniscule back seat, as far as possible from the windshield that was letting in the daylight brightness. “I mean, von Karma isn’t after you.”
“Ah, but le ladez, zey love ze zexy zwashbuckler!” Larry replied in what he obviously thought was a romance-movie French accent. To Phoenix it sounded as if he had some large foreign object lodged up his nose. Miles twitched as though he had a sudden urge to cover his ears.
“Then go buckle your swash at home!” Miles made as if to turn in the direction of Larry’s house, but Phoenix put a hand on his shoulder.
“Wait! What about my dinner? It’s Larry’s day.” They had set up a roster, with each of the seven people who knew about Phoenix’s condition taking one day of the week. Thursday was Larry, and the ostensible reason he’d come with them in the first place. Phoenix would have been happy to just eat and run, but Larry had been feeling left out by his two oldest friends and insisted on coming.
Miles sighed in a long-suffering sort of way, turning around and heading for his house, pulling into the driveway with a slight crunch of gravel. The three men got out, though Larry moved more slowly than the others.
“Why can’t we just do it in the car?”
Miles snorted. “I don’t want blood on my upholstery. It’s real leather and hell to clean.”
Phoenix sighed in bliss when they walked into the living room, flinging off his coat and reveling in the lack of natural light. Miles gave him a dirty look and hung the offending article precisely on a coat rack beside his own and Larry’s. The coat was perfect for a vampire: long and black with a deep hood. Phoenix felt positively badass wearing it, though Maya said it made him look like ‘someone from Organization XIII’. He didn’t get the reference, but assumed that was a band.
Larry looked slightly uncomfortable. “Hey, Edgey? Can I have something to drink?’ He mimed opening a bottle and downing the contents.
“And why should I give you alcohol?”
“Because being chomped on hurts like hell and I need something to get my nerves up? C’mon, guys, I just need a little one!” Larry looked at his two friends with what were probably supposed to be puppy-dog eyes. Miles sighed and got him a brandy from the cabinet, before sitting down on the couch. Phoenix sat next to him, while Larry took the armchair across from them.
“This is cozy, just like old times! But, drinking needs conversation, am I right?” He leaned towards his friends conspiratorially, taking a sip of his drink and giving them a slightly worrying grin. “Soooooo… let’s talk exes!”
-----
Miles and Phoenix stared at the brunette for several long moments before the defense attorney spoke up.
“Uh, Larry? I have one ex, one, and the memory is kind of one big sore spot. Tried to murder me, ring any bells?” Phoenix’s expression was schooled into a look of mild disapproval, but Miles could see his knuckles clenched white on his knees.
“Oh, fine. Current girlfriend, then?” Larry looked unperturbed by Phoenix’s reaction.
“In case you didn’t notice, he’s sitting right there. You want gossip, ask him yourself.” Phoenix jerked his head at the prosecutor sitting next to him, who was still wrapping his mind around the fact that Phoenix had just indirectly called him his ‘girlfriend’.
All of a sudden, Miles felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He looked up to find both Phoenix and Larry giving him curious looks.
“Well?” Larry took another gulp.
“Well what?” Maybe he could divert the Butz by acting coy.
“Well, any exes you want to talk about?” Great, Phoenix too? Why was he being double-teamed?
“No.” Ok, if coy didn’t work, how about monosyllabic?
Larry poured himself another glass, while Phoenix put a hand on Miles’s shoulder gave the prosecutor an empathy face. “Bad experience, huh?”
Miles was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, “No experience.” He sighed, carefully not looking at either of them. “Von Karma was very vocal on the subject of homosexuality, and I realized- I figured out pretty early. Anyway, I respected him, his beliefs and opinions… I thought there was something wrong with me.” Miles realized that he was going to need a brandy if this kept up, so he shut his mouth.
Miles felt an arm snake around his shoulders, and looked up into concerned blue eyes. His back snapped ruler-straight and he shook his head. The attorney removed his arm but kept his eyes on Miles, while Miles kept his eyes on the floor. The next few minutes passed with Larry chattering on about his past girlfriends - complaining about this girl or that one - while Phoenix and Miles sat and nodded at the right moments, not really listening to anything but their own thoughts.
God, when I said that out loud it sounded so depressing. I probably sounded like an emotional wreck, which I’m not. I never really suffered from a lack of companionship, and now I have Phoenix. A treacherous little voice in his head wondered for how long? but he shoved it away. For the first time in sixteen years he felt content, and he had no intention of losing that feeling.
“Chomp away, buddy! I’m ready!” Larry rolled his sleeve up above the elbow and brandished his wrist at the vampire. Phoenix licked his lips, but waited as Miles got up and grabbed a bowl from the kitchen. They had learned the hard way that wrist bites had a tendency to bleed all over everything.
Larry was still chattering when Miles placed the bowl on the coffee table. Apparently the brandy made him even more talkative.
“So, have you two done it ye-OWWWWWCH!” He glared at Phoenix, who’d bitten down hard enough to make blood spurt across the coffee table.
“Shorry, Rarry.” Phoenix muttered though his mouthful of arm. Larry made a sound in between a grunt and a whimper, staring at his own blood with a kind of horrified fascination. At least it had distracted Larry from his very personal line of questioning.
When he was done, Phoenix eased his fangs out of the brunette’s wrist, provoking a gasp from Larry. Miles was slightly gratified to see that the vampire didn’t lick off the rest of the blood, just apply a piece of gauze and a roller bandage and leave it at that.
“Damm’t, Edgey, how didja put up with this everyday for a month?” Larry winced and shook his arm, while Phoenix looked up from the bowl of blood with a slightly hurt expression.
“I put up with it because I am a man of infinite kindness and-” his eyes widened, “My Kirschwasser!”
“You hurt your wha’, Edgey?” Larry looked concerned.
“My brandy!” The crystal decanter was almost empty, while it had been half-full before.
“You hurt your brandy? Is that another word for-“
“It’s another word for ‘I’m calling you a taxi and berating you until it arrives for being a walking disaster’!” He grabbed Larry by the elbow and dragged him out of the room.
He didn’t wind up calling Larry a taxi, however, because the other man was on the upper end of tipsy - just below sloshed - and probably wouldn’t have put up any resistance should the cab driver prove unscrupulous… and it wouldn’t be said of Miles Edgewoth that he abandoned his friends, even the most annoying. So he wound up taking Larry back to his apartment and making sure he had no visible means of harming himself, before he headed back home.
“Honestly, Phoenix, I have serious trouble telling when that man is drunk or sober… Phoenix?” There was nobody in the living room, but he heard loud sounds coming from upstairs. Why is someone playing Frêdêric Chopin on my speakers at maximum volume?
He opened the door to his bedroom and saw a rather disturbing sight: Phoenix, his tie around his head like a headband and his face flushed, energetically trying to tango with a broom.
His first thought: Why is he tangoing to a waltz?
His second thought: Oh my god he’s completely hammered.
His third thought: Larry is off the feeding roster.
Title: Bloodlust
Pairing: Phoenix/Edgeworth, some Franziska/Adrian
Theme: Romance, Horror, Comedy, Action
Warnings: Spoilers for PW 1 & 2, vampires and blood, gay lawyers, violence... (and part 4 has SEX!)
Summary: Vampire!Phoenix and Miles are now a steady couple, but they just can't seem to get out of the habit of keeping secrets. An evil force lurks in the background, Shoe makes a cameo, and people get drunk. Enjoy!
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5
-----
“Hey, isn’t that Miles Edgeworth? The famous prosecutor?”
“You’re right! And is that-?”
“Phoenix Wright? That attorney?”
“Yeah! I’ve seen them on court TV! I thought they were rivals… I wonder what they’re doing here?”
A third voice joined the conversation, one Phoenix recognized. “Hey, ladies! Do you want the inside scoop on those two?” Rustling of fabric that was probably a nod, barely heard over the tinny sound of metal on metal. “Well, ladies, those two aren’t rivals they’re looo-“
Phoenix whipped his head around and pointed across the room at where Larry stood between two women, heads bent conspiratorially together.
“Larry Butz, say one more word and you’re up against Edgeworth next!” His voice was loud enough to reach all the way across the room and stop Larry dead.
One of the women opened her mouth in shock. “How did he hear us from all the way over there?”
Larry didn’t answer her, just shrugged and made his way back over to where Phoenix was glaring at him. When he reached the two lawyers, he gave them a wink and a thumbs-up.
“The girls here are so high-class here, Edgey! Though, the outfits are weird…” He tugged at his padding uncomfortably.
Miles didn’t bother to look at Larry as he replied icily. “It’s a fencing club, Larry. Most people here have money or talent- with two exceptions.”
Phoenix couldn’t help but feel insulted. “Hey, that’s not fair! I’m only here because you made me come. I still don’t see what’s wrong with chopsticks…”
Miles turned a look on him that would normally be reserved for something he had just stepped in. “They are unrefined, haphazard and frankly ridiculous weapons. And what if you come up against an opponent with superior reach?”
Phoenix knew it was a rhetorical question, but he didn’t care. “Throw one?”
“And then you’re left unarmed. Think for once, Wright.” He turned away from the attorney, picking up his practice foil from the bench and walking towards a free strip. Sighing, Phoenix followed him. It was time to get his butt kicked again.
They had been in combat training for a while now… or what Miles referred to as combat training. Phoenix called it “making me look like an idiot”. It didn’t help that Miles’s method of instruction seemed to consist mostly of beating him soundly several times in a row, while mocking his incompetence.
“Are the insults really necessary?” Phoenix asked as he stuffed his sweat-soaked padding into a gym bad while nursing a severely bruised ego.
“They always seem to improve your performance in court.” Miles bent over to grab his shoes from the bottom of his locker, giving Phoenix a very nice view. The vampire suppressed the urge to whistle, instead turning to close the locker and stare pointedly at the number engraved on the little metal plate.
It was hard, so hard to keep their relationship under wraps. In some ways, it was harder to conceal than his nature as one of the living dead. Larry’s inane comments aside, he had trouble acting normal around Miles anymore. He wanted to hold Miles, to kiss him, to run his fingers through that silver hair and inhale the mingled scent of tea and aftershave. Being in court with Miles and treating him like any other prosecutor was hard enough… and then Miles had to take him to a gym with a public changing room.
“Wright, are you trying to get a job as a living statue?”
Phoenix shook his head and pulled up the hood of his coat, slipping on his sunglasses as the three old friends exited the gym. Larry was chattering on about the girls at the fencing club, while Miles unlocked the car and motioned everyone in.
“I don’t see why you even bother coming, Larry.” Phoenix squeezed into the sports car’s miniscule back seat, as far as possible from the windshield that was letting in the daylight brightness. “I mean, von Karma isn’t after you.”
“Ah, but le ladez, zey love ze zexy zwashbuckler!” Larry replied in what he obviously thought was a romance-movie French accent. To Phoenix it sounded as if he had some large foreign object lodged up his nose. Miles twitched as though he had a sudden urge to cover his ears.
“Then go buckle your swash at home!” Miles made as if to turn in the direction of Larry’s house, but Phoenix put a hand on his shoulder.
“Wait! What about my dinner? It’s Larry’s day.” They had set up a roster, with each of the seven people who knew about Phoenix’s condition taking one day of the week. Thursday was Larry, and the ostensible reason he’d come with them in the first place. Phoenix would have been happy to just eat and run, but Larry had been feeling left out by his two oldest friends and insisted on coming.
Miles sighed in a long-suffering sort of way, turning around and heading for his house, pulling into the driveway with a slight crunch of gravel. The three men got out, though Larry moved more slowly than the others.
“Why can’t we just do it in the car?”
Miles snorted. “I don’t want blood on my upholstery. It’s real leather and hell to clean.”
Phoenix sighed in bliss when they walked into the living room, flinging off his coat and reveling in the lack of natural light. Miles gave him a dirty look and hung the offending article precisely on a coat rack beside his own and Larry’s. The coat was perfect for a vampire: long and black with a deep hood. Phoenix felt positively badass wearing it, though Maya said it made him look like ‘someone from Organization XIII’. He didn’t get the reference, but assumed that was a band.
Larry looked slightly uncomfortable. “Hey, Edgey? Can I have something to drink?’ He mimed opening a bottle and downing the contents.
“And why should I give you alcohol?”
“Because being chomped on hurts like hell and I need something to get my nerves up? C’mon, guys, I just need a little one!” Larry looked at his two friends with what were probably supposed to be puppy-dog eyes. Miles sighed and got him a brandy from the cabinet, before sitting down on the couch. Phoenix sat next to him, while Larry took the armchair across from them.
“This is cozy, just like old times! But, drinking needs conversation, am I right?” He leaned towards his friends conspiratorially, taking a sip of his drink and giving them a slightly worrying grin. “Soooooo… let’s talk exes!”
-----
Miles and Phoenix stared at the brunette for several long moments before the defense attorney spoke up.
“Uh, Larry? I have one ex, one, and the memory is kind of one big sore spot. Tried to murder me, ring any bells?” Phoenix’s expression was schooled into a look of mild disapproval, but Miles could see his knuckles clenched white on his knees.
“Oh, fine. Current girlfriend, then?” Larry looked unperturbed by Phoenix’s reaction.
“In case you didn’t notice, he’s sitting right there. You want gossip, ask him yourself.” Phoenix jerked his head at the prosecutor sitting next to him, who was still wrapping his mind around the fact that Phoenix had just indirectly called him his ‘girlfriend’.
All of a sudden, Miles felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He looked up to find both Phoenix and Larry giving him curious looks.
“Well?” Larry took another gulp.
“Well what?” Maybe he could divert the Butz by acting coy.
“Well, any exes you want to talk about?” Great, Phoenix too? Why was he being double-teamed?
“No.” Ok, if coy didn’t work, how about monosyllabic?
Larry poured himself another glass, while Phoenix put a hand on Miles’s shoulder gave the prosecutor an empathy face. “Bad experience, huh?”
Miles was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, “No experience.” He sighed, carefully not looking at either of them. “Von Karma was very vocal on the subject of homosexuality, and I realized- I figured out pretty early. Anyway, I respected him, his beliefs and opinions… I thought there was something wrong with me.” Miles realized that he was going to need a brandy if this kept up, so he shut his mouth.
Miles felt an arm snake around his shoulders, and looked up into concerned blue eyes. His back snapped ruler-straight and he shook his head. The attorney removed his arm but kept his eyes on Miles, while Miles kept his eyes on the floor. The next few minutes passed with Larry chattering on about his past girlfriends - complaining about this girl or that one - while Phoenix and Miles sat and nodded at the right moments, not really listening to anything but their own thoughts.
God, when I said that out loud it sounded so depressing. I probably sounded like an emotional wreck, which I’m not. I never really suffered from a lack of companionship, and now I have Phoenix. A treacherous little voice in his head wondered for how long? but he shoved it away. For the first time in sixteen years he felt content, and he had no intention of losing that feeling.
“Chomp away, buddy! I’m ready!” Larry rolled his sleeve up above the elbow and brandished his wrist at the vampire. Phoenix licked his lips, but waited as Miles got up and grabbed a bowl from the kitchen. They had learned the hard way that wrist bites had a tendency to bleed all over everything.
Larry was still chattering when Miles placed the bowl on the coffee table. Apparently the brandy made him even more talkative.
“So, have you two done it ye-OWWWWWCH!” He glared at Phoenix, who’d bitten down hard enough to make blood spurt across the coffee table.
“Shorry, Rarry.” Phoenix muttered though his mouthful of arm. Larry made a sound in between a grunt and a whimper, staring at his own blood with a kind of horrified fascination. At least it had distracted Larry from his very personal line of questioning.
When he was done, Phoenix eased his fangs out of the brunette’s wrist, provoking a gasp from Larry. Miles was slightly gratified to see that the vampire didn’t lick off the rest of the blood, just apply a piece of gauze and a roller bandage and leave it at that.
“Damm’t, Edgey, how didja put up with this everyday for a month?” Larry winced and shook his arm, while Phoenix looked up from the bowl of blood with a slightly hurt expression.
“I put up with it because I am a man of infinite kindness and-” his eyes widened, “My Kirschwasser!”
“You hurt your wha’, Edgey?” Larry looked concerned.
“My brandy!” The crystal decanter was almost empty, while it had been half-full before.
“You hurt your brandy? Is that another word for-“
“It’s another word for ‘I’m calling you a taxi and berating you until it arrives for being a walking disaster’!” He grabbed Larry by the elbow and dragged him out of the room.
He didn’t wind up calling Larry a taxi, however, because the other man was on the upper end of tipsy - just below sloshed - and probably wouldn’t have put up any resistance should the cab driver prove unscrupulous… and it wouldn’t be said of Miles Edgewoth that he abandoned his friends, even the most annoying. So he wound up taking Larry back to his apartment and making sure he had no visible means of harming himself, before he headed back home.
“Honestly, Phoenix, I have serious trouble telling when that man is drunk or sober… Phoenix?” There was nobody in the living room, but he heard loud sounds coming from upstairs. Why is someone playing Frêdêric Chopin on my speakers at maximum volume?
He opened the door to his bedroom and saw a rather disturbing sight: Phoenix, his tie around his head like a headband and his face flushed, energetically trying to tango with a broom.
His first thought: Why is he tangoing to a waltz?
His second thought: Oh my god he’s completely hammered.
His third thought: Larry is off the feeding roster.